The Sadness of Crusher Creel (Black Bolt #4 Comic Review)

Black Bolt and his fellow inmates finally made it into The Jailer’s restricted quarters, only for the creature they thought they killed to be a psychic projection. The REAL Jailer was something much more menacing.

What You Need to Know: The inmates, led by Black Bolt, failed in their endeavor to break free of their imprisonment and take down The Jailer once and for all. Once The Jailor’s true form, some large psychic sentient energy force, was revealed, the team was quickly killed and resurrected, then the group broken up and shackled to machines in unfamiliar rooms. Blinky and Rava are not present when Black Bolt comes to, finding himself in the room with Crusher Creel (AKA as Absorbing Man). Realizing they’re chained to machines that drain the oxygen from the room, Black Bolt initially tries to tell Creel to save his words to prolong their lives, but when all escape attempts bear fruitless, Creel decides to tell Black Bolt about his life.

What You’ll Find Out: Crusher Creel’s backstory is expanded on here, while Black Bolt and him are tied to a death machine, assuming this is the final time The Jailer will resurrect them and kill them once and for all. As Absorbing Man finds comfort in talking to Black Bolt, the reader is shown the trials that Crusher Creel has been through in his life, touching back on his beginnings with Loki and Thor, then Spider-Man, X-Men and other Supervillains he encountered throughout his career as a Supervillain. You learn what drove him to become a Supervillain and through artwork and fantastic storytelling, the writer and illustrator are able to make Crusher Creel come to life with emotional turmoil in his young life leading him down the path that ended in the prison they’re in. As Black Bolt listens to someone who, by all accounts, is a criminal and realizes some of his own misdeeds far outweigh the ones committed by Crusher Creel, it really makes the reader question who is the hero of this story.

What Just Happened? As the air runs out and death is knocking at their door once more, Lockjaw appears, taking Black Bolt with him. Will Black Bolt join the Royals in space in their endeavor to regain the mystical terrigen or will he help out those still imprisoned by The Jailer?